It’s the Stupid Economy

Last week’s special election in Florida’s 13th congressional district, where GOP Rep. David Jolly upset Democrat Alex Sink, provided a sugar high to Republicans, but otherwise it didn’t tell us all that much we didn’t already know.

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There’s close to a consensus among nonpartisan election handicappers about the upcoming 2014 midterm elections: Democrats can’t win the House, and they might lose even more ground to the GOP. And Republicans are bound to pick up some Senate seats, perhaps the six they need to take control or even more; their Senate map is so good that the 10 seats that seem likeliest to change hands in the fall are all held by Democrats. This was all true before about 183,000 voters in Pinellas County, Fla., had their say—0.001 percent of the total number of votes cast in the 2012 election—and it remains true now. Beyond that, this is the sixth-year election in a two-term presidential administration. That usually isn’t good news for the incumbent president’s party. It all adds up to a pretty good year for the team in red.

But politics is a crazy business, and we ought to ask: How can these predictions turn out to be wrong?

Midterm elections are almost always about at least one of these three north stars of politics: war, scandal and the economy. Depending on circumstances, any of the three can trump the other factors. In 2014, despite the U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan and the turmoil in Ukraine and Crimea, it doesn’t look like war will play much of a role, though as we learned on Sept. 11, 2001, this can change overnight.

As for the other two factors, Republicans will focus on Obamacare, which in GOP eyes is a scandal.

Democrats, of course, will use social issues to make Republicans seem like out-of-touch busybodies and fuddy-duddies—a stereotype that at least a handful of Republicans fuel—but they very clearly want to make the upcoming midterm a referendum on who’s better suited to run the economy, and for the benefit of whom (the wealthy or the middle class). That explains their focus on the minimum wage and unemployment insurance, issues designed to fire up the Democratic voters who too often sit on the sidelines in midterms.

Beyond the Democratic messaging strategy, let’s consider whether the economy is getting better and, if it is, what it could mean for the midterms.

Some widely cited statistics suggest the economy is improving, though there are also questions as to whether a large majority of Americans would agree that the numbers tell the real story. U.S. GDP picked up steam in the third quarter of 2013, rising to 4.1 percent, before sagging to 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter. Unemployment has dropped significantly from its high of 10 percent in 2009 to 6.7 percent in February, and despite the current sag, the stock market has skyrocketed to new record highs. Maybe this will change for better or worse before Election Day; the only thing more inaccurate than long-term political forecasting is economic projection.

Still, for the sake of argument, let’s say that the American economy will gather momentum, and that by the fall, most of the public—heretofore very skeptical after a long recession—is on board and optimistic (quite a leap, I know). Even in that case, could Democrats convert a hypothetically booming economy into an antidote to Obamacare unhappiness and sagging popularity for President Obama?

History is not encouraging. There is a remarkably weak relationship between the robustness of the U.S. economy and midterm election outcomes. The Senate results can be idiosyncratic, so let’s focus on the House to make the point.

What’s interesting is that modest growth in GDP can’t always save the president’s party from a bad midterm. In 1994, 2006 and 2010—midterm Waterloos for Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama—GDP growth was between 2.5 percent and 4 percent, not roaring but not bad either. Even more arresting are two midterms where economic growth soared 8.7 percent and 6.6 percent (1950 and 1966), yet Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Democrats were rebuked at the polls.

Deep disappointment in the early performances of Clinton and Obama—partly because of lingering economic hangovers after recessions—explains their first midterms, and the unpopular Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars provide compelling reasons why the economy didn’t predominate in the other election years.

On the flip side, there were midterms where the president’s party outperformed expectations shaped by the economy. There is no better example than Bush’s 2002 midterm election, which was more about terrorism and Iraq than domestic issues. The first (or only) midterm of Eisenhower (1954), Richard Nixon (1970) and George H.W. Bush (1990) also qualify. In every case except 2002, the president’s party lost seats, but not as many as slow-to-no GDP growth would have suggested. Ike’s popularity, Nixon’s use of social issues (such as opposition to busing for racial integration) and the two Bushes’ military buildups prior to wars in Iraq suggest why.

Three other cases give the Democrats some hope for 2014. John F. Kennedy (1962) and Reagan (1986) kept their party’s House losses to a minimal four and five seats, respectively, while Clinton’s Democrats, aided by GOP overreach on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, actually gained five seats in 1998. GDP growth approaching or exceeding 5 percent in each of those years clearly helped, though the successful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis for JFK and the unpopular impeachment effort against Clinton were also big pieces of the electoral puzzle. So too, in the cases of Reagan and Clinton, was the fact that their party was at a relatively low ebb in the House and simply didn’t have many seats left to shed.

In any event, the Democrats could be onto something for November. A strong economy is worth stressing, if only to minimize the party’s likely seat losses. That’s the good news for their strategy.

The bad news for Democrats, and great news for the GOP, is that a solid economy doesn’t change the midterm equation all that much. As political scientist Alan Abramowitz of Emory University has noted, midterm elections during recessions since World War II have had a disastrous result for the president’s party, with an average loss of 39 seats. Yet midterms during periods of strong growth have still yielded an average loss of 21 seats for the president’s party. To take control of the House in 2014, the Democrats must somehow net 17 seats. By historical standards, the mountain they must climb begins to look like Everest.

Maybe strong GDP numbers in the first three quarters of 2014, coupled with a Democratic emphasis on income inequality and the need for an increase in the minimum wage, can spur the Democratic Party base to turn out in large numbers and generate an unprecedented turnover of the House to the president’s party. That’s right: Since the advent of the current two-party system that we’ve had since the Civil War, the House has never changed party control in the White House’s favor in any midterm election.

Or perhaps a campaign message centered on the economy can have some impact on a few critical Senate race outcomes; after all, clinging to Senate control by a seat or two may be the best Democrats can realistically hope to achieve. Even that looks difficult, though, given Obama’s poll ratings, Obamacare’s unifying and energizing effect on the GOP base and the Republican-tilted group of Senate seats being contested.

With both the House and the Senate elections, Obama and the Democrats are trying to change history with their economic-based one-two punch, and it may well be the Democrats’ best shot at present. But the past suggests what a longshot that strategy is.

Larry J. Sabato is university professor of politics and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which publishes the online, free Crystal Ball politics newsletter every Thursday, and a regular columnist for Politico Magazine. His most recent book is The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.